


There's So Much More

by writingforFUNandbecauseBoredom



Category: Boruto: Naruto Next Generations, Naruto
Genre: Angst, BAMF Minato, Blood and Gore, Everyone Has Issues, Hatake Sakumo is parental, He's smaller than the other twelve year olds, In which i like to make sunshine suffer, Jiraiya is also suffering, Keiko is the dissapointed dad friend, Koichi is that mom friend, Like, Minato cries, Minato is small, Minato tries to teleport away from his problems, Minato's genin teammates come back from the dead, Namikaze Minato has issues, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Hatake Sakumo, Protective Minato, Protective Uchiha Obito, Sakumo being a dad, Shinigami's Stomach is Hell, Trauma, Traumatized Minato, imma come up with new tags later, it doesn't work out, whooP, whoop de doo we stan suffering
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-23
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2020-10-26 15:50:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20744750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writingforFUNandbecauseBoredom/pseuds/writingforFUNandbecauseBoredom
Summary: EDIT: OFFICIALLY HIATUS (Sorry but I’m not in the fandom anymore guys. However, you can use whatever ideas you may gain for your own works)I have no idea what's going onI think they're ten tho.Enjoy their suffering and leave some ideas if you want?Original title: "I'm Going To Kick The White Sage In The Face" - Namikaze MinatoFirst chap posted at 1:04 am. Go me.In which Minato's not sure what the hell is going on, but for some reason everyone he knows is alive and are twelve with their memories intact. And they seem to be in an entirely new, alien universe, but with no signs of the life that originally existed there.What he does gather is that the White Sage is responsible for this. Somehow.Also fic and chapter titles are from the song 'You Can Be King Again'.





	1. You're Alone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [disco_dino](https://archiveofourown.org/users/disco_dino/gifts), [Artemis_Fandom_Things](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artemis_Fandom_Things/gifts), [why_is_this_a_thing_now](https://archiveofourown.org/users/why_is_this_a_thing_now/gifts), [tothemovies (jayjem_jam)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jayjem_jam/gifts).

A world of absolute pain.

That's not what Pure Land is supposed to be, surely.

On the other hand, Minato was in slight disbelief at the idea of leaving the Shinigami's Stomach, and getting the chance to meet Kushina again.

His disbelief may not have been unfounded, as this pain that went through his entire body, from the inside and the outside, and the pressing pressure from his brain, was all too familiar from those sixteen years....

Suddenly he feels hands grab his shoulders-

_No more no more god please no more-_

He is reacting, all instincts screaming at him to fight, to escape, even if he knows its useless, even if no one would ever hear his screams, not even Kurama whose absence is so noticeable and he is alone alone 

_AlOnE_

Then he feels himself get pressed against something- something that smells like the thunderstorms and the woods...

Against a fabric.

His senses are suddenly hit and enveloped within a warm chakra that brimmed of life, and he thinks he sobs a little because he now can feel his own heart beating and he's _alive and this isn't there it isn't there-_

He hears a childish voice, sounding sorrowful and with a mental understanding of someone over fourty... and so familiar.

"It's alright, you're safe, your time there is over now." 

The chakra is so soothing that he finds himself sinking back into a slumber, pain still all over his body but number now with the healing balm the iryo-jutsu he feels being used on him brings, he absent mindedly notes he seems to be a bit smaller....?

He is out like a light before he could contemplate further down that line of thought.

——————

When he becomes aware again he still has pain, though its lessened quite a bit, and he is... moving?

No. He is on someone that is moving.

And he can hear voices around him.

His eyes remain closed, all limbs including his head still limp, his breaths rhythm only changing when the chakra pinging and flaring against his senses is deemed familiar.

Brief quiet, before another, different familiar voice speaks to him, a familiar rumble that he doesn't remember being directed at him in a long while and much younger than he remembers, voice having a high note of someone young enough to be standard genin age..

"Don't move Minato-kun, you're not recovered yet."

And he opens his eyes, hands gripping the others shirt, feeling hope and caution well up in him, because if it is who the voice belongs to then he truly must not be there anymore but if it isn't then...

"..Sa...mo...?" 

Talking was painful, his throat burning and his voice box completely trashed, but he could blarily see the long silver strands that one of his own students bare, albeit much shorter.

The world momentarily pauses before a voice soft and achingly familiar answered him, a soothing rumble from the croon that passes through it. 

“Yes Minato-kun, it’s me, Sakumo.”

Minato closes his eyes, as he feels drowsiness hit him again. He only has the energy to dwell momentarily on how young the Hatake’s voice was, or how he could sense the Nidaime, Shodaime and Sandaime’s chakra against him, or how unusually smaller he seems to be before he goes back to unconsciousness.

All that matters is that Sakumo is there. Sakumo is alive. Someone is alive.

He managed to at least have one of them left alive.


	2. You're On Your Own

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Minato's died at the hand of many demons, and many demons died at his hands.
> 
> The Shinigami's Stomach forever carries his screams, and he has to wonder how much of himself he left there along with them.

He wakes up again when his instincts kick in, alerting him to danger, and with his limbs screaming he rolls away from where he had laid down, right where a familiar spike strikes the ground.

Adrenaline and the sense of urgent danger makes him hyper focus on the apparent battlefield that he is in, immediately taking notes of his allies, and his enemies. His heart stops beating momentarily, his body already moving to grab the spike to parry away several that nearly kills who he duly notes to be Hatake Sakumo, recognizing the pack of creatures.

Recognizing them as the demons from hell.

It’s a quick, familiar work to slice off its exposed snout, and then to kick it back before driving its own weapon right where he knows its heart would be.

He barely registers his own yelling, mouth automatically opening to tell exactly where their weaknesses are.

It gets the job done.

By the time all the creatures were dead and gone, and Minato knew that it was all of them for it never travelled, and he witnessed and experienced first hand how those who attempt to leave the nest dies, wether it be the demon or their prey.

He doesn’t feel his own hand bleeding from gripping the spike so hard, not even when calm has settled down. 

He feels anything but calm.

He studies the landscape of where they are, the terrifying familiarity of it all making his heart beat faster and grip the spike tighter as he moves along almost on auto pilot. He keeps checking for signs of life, for signs that they failed to kill one of them because if they failed to kill one it will breed and Minato can’t have that, won’t have that-

“Yondaime-“ a hand touches his.

A snarl rips out of his throat as he whips around, despair and rage bubbling in him because _he’s still there still screaming in tandem with those demons laughter-_

_ **”MINATO!”** _

The voice makes him pause, freeze stiffly as he’s gripped by hands again, two of them holding him by the shoulders and another two gently prying his bleeding hand and fingers from the sharp edges of his makeshift weapon. 

“Minato.” The voice registers again. “Breathe.”

It’s a command, sharp, edged with concern, and it makes Minato realize his lungs are screaming in protest at the lack of air.

He inhales, coughed weakly, feels the adrenaline rush crash down as his hand lets go of the spike and everything _aches_.

“Good good take it slow...” Minato manages to regain his focus, recognizing that the one speaking to him was a child with dark eyes and silver hair and that he was almost as small as him.

Were it not for his sensory abilities he wouldn’t have been able to tell that this... teen?, child?...was Hatake Sakumo at all.

His legs are weak, they give out under him as he struggles to get proper air flow back into his lungs and he grips Sakumo’s arm with his uninjured hand, the other being held in the hands of another familiar child, and angrily muttering feminine voice drowned out by the Hatake’s voice encouraging him to inhale and exhale...

Tired. Why’s he so tired? Shouldn’t he be dead? 

Shouldn’t all these terrors be over by now?

He ends up unconsciously leaning against a shoulder that is slightly taller than him. He’s always been a bit on the small side. There’s an emotion bubbling up inside him that’s grieving, struggling to burst from inside of him, and it does so in a sob, with hands clinging to the Hatake in front of him and face buried into his shoulder as he tries to hide away from the world.

“..not again not again please not again...” 

Thin but strong arms hold him tightly, and a voice fiercely protective answers his pleas.

“It won’t happen again. Never again.”

And he falls back into the darkness.

————————

When he wakes up again thankfully there isn’t a crisis going on.

Instead he’s greeted by two pairs of sharingan staring into his own.

The punch is instinctive, sent without a thought and with a blank expression. 

It does the job anyway.

“Ow ow ow ow-“ the Uchiha child whines, holding his broken nose and looking at him with teary dark eyes from where he laid on the ground. “That hurt!” 

Minato stares.

Because he didn’t know this Uchiha. His chakra was unfamiliar as well, though it still carried his clans dynamics.

He looks around from where he sat up instead, deeming the stranger to be not a threat despite possessing the Mangekyo Sharingan due to how he’s still breathing. 

He focuses on young Hatake Sakumo before he focuses on the other three children- all genin age. And very familiar. He squints his eyes before he tests on of their name out loud. “Jiraiya-sensei?…”

Jiraiya grins wide from where he sits between Orochimaru and Tsunade by a campfire. “Yo Minato, how does it feel to be tiny again?”

He looks down at his own hands and indeed. They were small. Young. He clenches them a few times, feeling strangely dissociated from his own body. He looks down further to find himself bandaged. He doesn’t remember being that intensely injured last time he was awake.

“What’s happening?” Is the flat question that leaves his mouth. His next question a second later as he glances up to the sky is “And....where are we?” 

The stars were aligned weirdly. Differently. 

“Technically speaking, we haven’t left our world…” Orochimaru begins slowly, and that tells Minato all that he needs to know to understand how fucked they are.

He gets a further understanding of how fucked they are when what looks like mini version of the Nidaime crashes to the ground while riding on the back of a gigantic bird that Minato recognizes as another one of the demons from literal hell.

“I got us our dinner.” Senju Tobirama says. “Good to know you’re awake.” He adds to Minato.

He’s not sure how to answer to that, and he doesn’t actually feel that his throat is up for talking the amount of words he wants to scream as the demon twitches for a moment, causing him to flinch a moment before Tobirama cuts it’s head off with a swift suiton Jutsu. 

“It’s dead.”

Tobirama’s flat, matter of fact voice is more reassuring than one aiming for reassuring would be, and Minato unclenches his fingers. 

He still gets up and makes sure to put some distance between him and the giant bird demon. Which meant he ended up sitting next to the ten year old and very much alive Hatake Sakumo.

And for some reason the stranger Uchiha followed him with a pout and sat down next to him. 

Right, he should probably apologize for the nose. 

“Sorry about your nose.”

The Uchiha visibly brightens at this, mood immediately changing.

“Nah it was a good punch, and I shouldn’t have stood over you like that.”

He hears Tsunade-sama murmur “Shouldn’t have apologized.” 

“What were you planning to do anyway?” He asks, suspicion growing inside him. Because why settle activated Sharingan over him?

In answer the raven haired child shrugs grinning with a look that suspiciously looks like the one Jiraiya-sensei adopts whenever he’s up to something lecherous. “Oh, I couldn’t resist not memorizing such a pretty face.”

A slow blink.

Ah.

Okay?

“I’m married.” He states.

Huh, that’s one emotive Uchiha.

“Why didn’t anyone say anything?!” 

He took a moment to watch the long, raven haired child, that was probably not a child just like the rest of the people surrounding him, and appreciated the mood swing that would befit the Shodaime for a moment. It’s truly a fascinating thing to behold, especially on an Uchiha.

“You’re taking this more calmly than I expected.” Sakumo says from besides him, and Minato doesn’t look in his direction as he stares into the campfire, hearing squelching sounds as Tobirama skins the creature with another kid that has skunk like hair- Itama the former Nidaime calls him- and he’s trying very hard to stay in that apathetic state, he’s focusing on anything else, anything-anything but the images of the White Fang’s cold dead body as Kakashi’s standing over him, shaking him, broken broken little boy _he failed him he failed him_-

“It’s the shock.” He says, realizing that he hasn’t answered for a while. 

It’s clear the Hatake doesn’t believe him. But that’s okay. Minato doesn’t really believe that the world around him is all that real.

He doesn’t think too hard when the sight of Madara doesn’t make him feel anything. It just further makes him took Kaguya somehow managed to find a way to trap undead in the Tsukuyomi… or something.

Something dark, bitter and vicious purrs in satisfaction as Uchiha Madara avoids looking at him in the eye, fearful and quiet, before it disappears into an abyss that is becoming harder and harder to ignore.

Minato doesn’t try too hard to prevent it from consuming his insides. He aches too much to be capable of doing anything about it.

He wonders where Kushina is.


	3. So what, have you gone blind?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More of Minato suffering. 
> 
> Meet Minato's genin teammates; half Hyuuga Keiko and Hoki Koichi.

It’s a strange sort of relief to do something, even if it’s just telling the weaknesses of the variety of demons he had encountered in the shinigami’s stomach in a detached form of way. 

He separates himself, and talks like he would when he’s giving a report, doesn’t allow himself to think about the numerous times he died, each death a different sort of horrific and unforgettable. It’s even worse when Minato’s eidetic memory is taken into account. 

“-That’s the amount of information I have.”

“Are you okay Minato?”

The blonde blinks at a child sized Hiruzen, who has a visible look of concern in his eyes, and a child sized Hashirama had a blank expression on his face, pointedly staring at where Minato’s palms are. That’s when Minato realizes that there is something warm trickling down them.

His nails feel uncomfortable, blood stuck in them as he unclenches his fingers, self preservation instincts making him begin weave chakra into the half ring shaped open wounds in the softer parts of his hands. 

“I’m fine for now.” He dismissed showing off his rapidly healing palms, then cringed a bit when he sensed Sakumo’s stern gaze from behind him.

“I think that’s enough questions for now.” The Hatake says, voice leaving no room for argument. Minato wants to huff, but can’t, because he actually doesn’t have it in him to protest the care Sakumo’s giving him, selfish as it is.

It should be Kakashi that’s experiencing his fathers affection. 

One of the tattoos that have been growing across his skin flares and shoots pain across his arm.

He ignores it even as he gets a look of concern shot at him by Sakumo, who knows him too well. 

——————————

Somewhere along the way, they end up running into ruins. Ruins that show signs of civilization that spoke a whole different language, a written form that was nothing like kanji or anything that, as far as Minato was aware, anyone within their group had seen before.

And decidedly speaking, a mystery is exactly what he needs to feel the slightest bit useful.

“Not trying to underestimate your abilities but you can’t even use chakra right now. You’re going to fall.” Comes Izuna’s flat voice from below him. Sakumo had to leave with Hiruzen to investigate another part of the ruins. Tobirama and Izuna had decided to sign up to tag along with Minato in return.

Minato knew why they were doing this. He is simultaneously annoyed, but also grateful. 

_”Hey hey Mina-chan how about I just leave you here? Would you struggle to live? Would you beg for me to stay? Would you feel lonely? Hey? Mina-chan? Oh right! I cut your throat! Okay! I’m leaving then~”_

He was grateful. 

Despite the fact that his apathy still hasn’t left him, that this constant hovering over him made him feel weak, and it was grating for him how _small_ everyone was and it didn’t help that he got reminded of it every time they interacted with him-

The idea of being left alone with his thoughts is much worse.

“I will be fine.” Minato tells him absently, reaching for another book as he carefully throws the one he finished translating the best he could to Tobirama. While the rhythm and the shape of the characters were entirely different, fuuinjutsu required plenty of times to think out of the box and use unorthodox methods. It was in no way simple matter, and he just begin translating.

Still, even one book was progress. Especially when the book seemed to be written in the opposite direction as well.

“We’ve been here for half a day already! At least I think it’s half a day! It definitely feels like it!”

“Feel free to leave.”

“If I do you two will be stuck here for an entire week.”

Minato blinks, then glances down to see that Tobirama had begun analyzing the book he had just translated.

“…You might have a point.” He concedes, ignoring the memory of Kushina snapping him out of his intense focus and scolding him for spending overtime within Konoha’s library. Random memories have been pushing towards the forefront of his mind lately.

He should probably mention that.

He won’t.

Izuna hops up the wall using chakra, and Minato feels a brief moment of envy - because his own chakra control _sucked_ for some reason- before he was swept off his feet by the eager Uchiha.

“Better catch up with us Senju!” Izuna chirps cheerfully as Minato sighs and settles into being carried by the taller boy. 

Perhaps physically de aging effected their mental state as well?

It wouldn’t be too much of a far fetch conclusion, considering the many time Inoichi had stated that physical health and mental health depend on each other.

He ignored the twinge the memory of a mother hen Inoichi sent.

——————————

He stops breathing when he sees two new additions to their party that Sakumo and Hiruzen bought back from their trip. 

Vaguely, he can hear Sakumo’s concerned voice ringing out. Calling out to him.

But it’s not enough to distract him from who he’s seeing. 

From the memories that come with seeing them.

Hyuuga Keiko. Hoki Koichi.

_Not fast enough not fast enough you letted them die-_

He can’t breathe.

_Blood, blood everywhere, Keiko’s gruff caring and Koichi’s kindness, you won’t ever see them again and it’s all your fault you were supposed to stay together-_

**He can’t breathe.**

_”It’s war, kid, there is nothing we could’ve done.” Jiraiya-sensei says, pained, so pained, was there truly nothing they could have done? Was there truly nothing? “You’re the only thing Jiraiya has left.” Was he truly enough-_

He rips away from the hands trying to shake him back to reality and teleports away.

——————————

‘Ow.’ Minato thinks after a while of laying down in the deeper parts of the ruins library, laying down on the dust covered marble floor and breathing raggedly. ’That was a terrible idea.’

The tattoo like vines that circled from his chest and reached towards his tenketsu points were throbbing, shooting minute pains to his joints.

After a few more minutes of simply breathing he turns to lie on his side, curls up.

A sob breaks out.


	4. Have you forgotten what you have and what is yours?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Minato: I'm just going to keep all my emotions here.
> 
> Minato: Then I will die.
> 
> \----------
> 
> Obito: WHAT THE FUCK ARE _YOU_ DOING WITH MINATO-SENSEI?!?!?!
> 
> Madara: Ah-
> 
> Obito: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA *attacks*
> 
> \----------
> 
> Koichi: Minato.
> 
> Minato: ...So there was an idea.
> 
> Koichi: _Minato sweetie no_
> 
> \-----------

“So, Yondaime eh?”

He tries to answer back with a quip, tries to give the appropriate answer that painfully familiar, playful quip deserves.

But his throat clogs up, and it’s so hard to meet Keiko’s gaze.

And he hasn’t been in this small body for such a long time. He hasn’t been the teammate of Koichi and Keiko for a long long time.

_”Haaah? What do you think teammates are for, stupid? No. You’re not paying for this. Sit and enjoy the food.”_

He only manages to nod, corner of his lips twitching up briefly, before his face gets stuck back to its expressionless state as he keeps his eyes trained on the _english_ page in front of him.

He can feel Keiko’s aura briefly spark with frustration, before it turns sad.

“…I’m making you uncomfortable.”

Children. Blunt, and always ready to point out the elephant in the room.

He tries to say something.

His throat constricts, like someones choking him.

“Am I just a ghost to you?” She whispers before she gets up from where she was sitting besides him, swiping non existent dust from her clothes. Minato knows she’s giving him a chance to say something-anything- before she leaves, before she goes away-

The grip on his throat tightens.

-And she leaves, her aura flaring in sadness as she does so.

Minato finds himself able to breathe, and gives into the urge to squeeze his eyes shut and press his palms against his eyelids when he feels her far enough away that she won’t sense him.

——————————

“I avoided you.” Jiraiya tells him quietly, a week since Keiko and Koichi had come back and 6 days since Sakumo, Tsunade and Tobirama’s combined efforts managed to coax Minato out of the library after his attempt to run away from his problems, which actually worked for a night. It would have lasted longer if he was actually trying. 

“And I avoided you as well.” Minato retorts without looking up from the book he was translating, a book that spoke of how diverse the civilization that lived here before was, and how many different languages was. Minato was able to even find an actual dictionary, from kanji to now what he understood was English. 

There were other, different languages that weren’t English as well though. He had hopes that there would be dictionaries for those as well... although it wouldn’t be that necessary.

_”Our origins are important Minato. Never forget where you came from.”_

“But I didn’t have good enough reason-“ 

“Jiraiya-sensei. Please.”

He didn’t mean to sound so tired. Just.

He keeps remembering long past memories he had forgotten before. Keeps switching between hearing voices of that tinge with warmth, and then of cruelty. Keeps switching between memories that were traumatic and ones that are not.

His mind is an absolute mess.

“I can’t talk to Keiko and Koichi at all.” He says finally, and he barely manages to stop himself from wincing at speaking their names. Jiraiya catches onto it all the same he’s sure. “All I see is their dead bodies on…. On that battlefield.”

_He doesn’t have a choice. He has to take her eyes away. She wasn’t sealed, and she happened to die with her Byakugan activated._

_Jiraiya-sensei is far away with his teammates, fighting against Suna-nin with the Snake Sannin and the Slug Princess. Koichi’s dead. Minato had checked, had no choice but to close his eyes and sealed his body into a body scroll already._

_During the fight he ended up having to use another body scroll as a trap in a moment of desperation. There was so many of them._

_Keiko is dead, and her Byakugan is activated, ripe for the taking, could be harvested if Minato gets ambushed because it’s a miracle that he is standing at all._

_He keeps an extreme awareness towards all of his surroundings as he feels his hand move to destroy the half-Hyuuga’s eyes._

“…This is all so fucked up.” Jiraiya finally sighs, ruffling his own hair as he slumps forwards, suddenly looking old despite physically being a child. 

Minato wonders if he looks like that too.

——————————

“Okay so like-what did you just do?”

This time around Minato is a bit too stunned from what just happened to focus on the hallucinatory blood-_not there its not there he’s alive it’s not real_\- smeared on Koichi’s face.

He REALLY should PROBABLY get around informing the group about that...

At the moment though....

“I kind of found a manual of sorts to the uhh-“ what do you even call that thing? “-altar thing-“

“and just wHEN EXACTLY-“

“Just now.”

“MINATO WHY-“

Koichi had grabbed hold of his front now. Hm. Didn’t like that. Almost was going to raise his hand and-

More pressing issue though.

“We should probably move away from here.” faint. Everything sounds very, very faint. He doesn’t remember Chakra exhaustion feeling like this.

On the other hand, when he had pressed his fingers against that tile, and something had nicked his blood, he’s not quite sure if it _was_ chakra taken from him.

This feels like a really bad trip actually.

“FUCK-“

Then everything went white.

——————————

When Minato wakes up again he’s being carried by someone whose chakra feels like fire yet earth, partially like Hashirama’s but more like-like-

“—bito calm down-“

“Calm down?!”

Minato feels partially awake, partially floating…he doesn’t think he’s really awake.

Activating a foreign device out of impulse was beyond a dumb decision really. Where was his self control??? 

“DON’T TELL ME TO CALM DOWN BAKASHI!!!“

Loud. Too loud. _Cackling, digging in between his ribs, cooing as he sobs and screams in both rage and pain, weak and overpowered_-

He must have let out a noise because Obito and Kakashi stop speaking, the former softening his grip and dragging him closer to warmth at the same time.

“Sensei.” Obito had hushed his voice this time and _yeah_, that was a blessing for the meager remains of his sanity. “S-sorry about that-“ _’And everything else I’ve ever done to you’_ were the unspoken words. “How are you feeling right now?” 

Minato manages to open his eyes halfway through in response, his eyesight bleary, and when he manages to get his throat working it comes out raspy “Like I got trampled on.” He almost was going to say ‘Like I died again’ but found that it might be too insensitive of a thing to say around Obito. “Can’t tell where the pains coming from.” Ugh. Eyelids closing again. Pain is shooting all over his body and it feels like his nerves have been set on fire. 

“Uh, well, your uh, tattoos are doing something weird so that might be it…” 

Right. Those. Minato almost forgot them. 

“Oh yeah they do that.” Then he added. “Forgot.” 

“…Sealing gone wrong?”

“Not…sealing..complicated…” his brain is deciding to shut down again.

“-ensei?”

“-ust tired. We should-“

“But Rin is-“

And before he could hear the rest he drifts off completely.

‘Kakashi, Ron and Obito are small again huh?’

’They’re going to be taller than me.’

‘Drat.’


	5. Glass Half Empty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Minato: Stop talking about my height people.

_”Mina-chan~”_

_“Mina-chan~”_

_ **”Mina-chan~”** _

_No. Stay away. _

_“Are you there?~”_

_Stay back stay back staybackbackback-_

_“Don’t worry, I will find you~”_

_No._

_“After all…”_

_No._

_“We are **MeAnT fOr EaCh OtHeR~**”_

__

He wakes up drenched in sweat, struggling to breathe, pain shooting through his entire body, hands clenching at his own chest. There were black spots dancing across his vision, and he can hear voices around him, voices that make him think _he_ is here, and he tries to move away as far as possible when he feels a touch on his hand, the pain that seemed to have gotten worse the only thing stopping him from jumping. 

“Sensei!” 

Kakashi.

It’s Kakashi.

It’s Kakashi not _him_. 

“Sensei, it’s just me, Rin, Obito, and you here, okay?”

“You’re safe.”

His sensory is slow coming, which is very worrying, and he manages to sense Obito, Kakashi and…. Rin’s chakra. 

_Kakashi’s hand is covered in blood and Minato has lost another student._

_Kakashi scrubs his hand and all Minato can do is watch as his only student left alive drifts further away and shuts himself tighter._

_Minato tries to-_

_Tries to-_

_He holds on with Kushina at his side._

“…Kakashi-kun.” He manages to croak out, and his voice sounds strange to his own ears. 

“Sensei.” is said again, and this time his sight is clearer, and he can see they’re in a tent. Kakashi draws near, his mask in place and one eye closed. 

“Are you okay?” 

“No.” He manages to say, because he is in no condition to lie. “What… happened?” He asks, because that is the only thing he can think of doing in this situation. 

He doesn’t know what to do with the fact that Obito and Rin were there. Alive. He isn’t sure if he was capable of…well, resolving the rather obvious issues that were present there. 

Rin… Obito….

_ His own student, his own student, he was alive and he left him there he should have checked he should have **done** something, anything_

Yeah. Right. That is not a conversation he think he can have right now.

“You kind of fell out of a portal-“

“Were you really this small?”

Ah yes nostalgia. That sentence right there was a very Obito thing to say. Minato isn’t sure if he wants to burst into hysterical laughter or roll his eyes. He settles for a sigh, because that’s the least painful action to do, even as he feels like sharp vines writhe inside his chest and scrap against the bone of his ribs. 

“Rin, Obito, mind stepping outside for a moment?” Kakashi tells them both, and Obito looks like he wants to protest before Rin immediately snags him by the ear to drag him back. 

Kakashi then locks his piercing gray eye with Minato’s blue. 

“What do you remember?”

“…I remember I activated something in the ruins…some sort of transportation device I think… was there anyone else with me?”

“Yes. Several people in fact. I recognize most of them… I need you to confirm me wether or not if some of them are a threat.”

They both knew he was asking about Uchiha Madara, more than anyone else.

“No, none of them are a threat.” Kakashi studies him for a long time before nodding and turning his head to the side as if listening for something. “That is good.” He replies. Minato can sense more people outside the tent, and he counts the auras he knows by memory…

Maito Gai. Maito Dan. Kato Dan. Yamanaka Inoichi. Unknown Yamanaka. Nara Shikaku. Akimichi Chouza. Uchiha Sasuke. And….

Suddenly a voice is heard outside of the tent. “Oi, Kakashi-sensei, mind if I come in?…” 

Minato breath hitches.

“Yeah sure, I was just about to step out anyway.” The younger Hatake answers, getting up to brush off non existent dust. “Gotta make sure my old man catches up.”

All things considered he isn’t sure if this feels like abandonment or being given much needed privacy.

Naruto…

_ “Would you like to know about your son?” Orochimaru had asked him once, when the pain was too much _

_“… Please.”_

_And he tells him._

“Hey dad.” The Nanadaime Hokage greets him with a soft quirk of the lips. “We’ve got a lot to talk about.”


End file.
